The Size of Research and Engineering Teams

This paper discusses the very common problem of overstaffing in a large development engineering effort. A number of the technical, organizational, and psychological problems that lead to inefficiency in the engineering effort are discussed. It is shown that because of this variation of efficiency with size, the ``usual´´ man-hour estimate may be meaningless. In fact, it is asserted that an increase in staff may actually lead to an increase in total time for accomplishing a development engineering effort. Finally, it is pointed out that the usual mechanisms for estimating efforts of new assignments may automatically perpetuate or even intensify an overstaffing problem.